 A couple of weeks ago on the program, we talked about how Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlai was being attacked by her own Democratic Party colleagues for daring to say, one, that Israel is an apartheid state and two, that if you are progressive, it is not acceptable for you to support or condone this system of apartheid and abuse. Now, there were a lot of individuals who weighed in. One of them was CNN's Jake Tapper, who also condemned what she had to say. And a lot of people on the left talked about this. David Dole talked about this. And also Katie Halper talked about this as well. And for those of you who don't know, Katie Halper has been a co-host on The Hills Rising. And I want to share the segment that she created in response to this entire story. This is just a snippet, but it's a really important part of what she had to say. Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan facing criticism today from what several of her Jewish colleagues have deemed anti-semitic comments. Here's what Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, said at a virtual event yesterday. I want you all to know that among progressives, it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel's apartheid government. And we will continue to push back and not accept this idea that you are progressive, progressive except for full esteem any longer. The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, slammed the comments saying that Israel does not have an apartheid government and said that she should not be imposing a, quote, litmus test in a tweet saying, quote, Tlaib tells American Jews that they need to pass an anti-Zionist litmus test to participate in progressive space. Some of Tlaib's Jewish colleagues in Congress agreed. Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called her comments, quote, outrageous and, quote, nothing short of anti-semitic. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is right. It is outrageous. It's outrageous that Rashida Tlaib is getting attacked. Tlaib is merely stating that Israel is an apartheid state and that people who claim to have progressive values cannot support an apartheid state. No matter how loose a definition of progressive we use, it certainly excludes supporting a racist apartheid system. What's outrageous is attacking Tlaib for pointing out that progressive except for Palestine is an intrinsically contradictory position. What's also outrageous is that the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt would claim that Israel is not an apartheid government. What's outrageous is that Jake Tapper would accept Greenblatt's judgment as the truth and not propaganda that needed to be pushed back against. I understand that Greenblatt and perhaps Tapper feel like Israel is not an apartheid state, but unfortunately for them apartheid isn't about your feelings. It's about facts. In 1973, the UN defined the crime of apartheid as any inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. In 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defined a apartheid as inhumane acts of a character that are committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime. These inhuman acts include, among others, inflection upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm by the infringement of their freedom or dignity or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel and human or degrading treatment or punishment, by arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups, any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. I'd encourage Jake Tapper to look this up sometime. Now she goes on to bring in specific examples as to why this is a system of apartheid and abuse. She brings in facts. However, at the Hill, they didn't like that. And what happened was they decided to not only censor the segment, not run it after she filmed it with them, but they fired her because of this. They fired her. Now, first of all, I've just got to point out the obligatory, where's all of the free speech warriors? We hear a lot of right wingers talk about how the left doesn't value free speech, but here you see a leftist that was censored. And I don't hear Dave Rubin speaking out. I don't hear Charlie Kirk speaking out. It's interesting how they have nothing to say when you actually see a media organization censor somebody for saying what they don't want her to say. It's ridiculous. And she wrote via Twitter, it shouldn't matter that I'm Jewish, but I am. At least I'm just called a self-loathing Jew, which is slightly less damaging than being called an anti-Semite. If you're a non-Jewish Arab slash Arab American or Muslim, you're especially smeared as an anti-Semite. And because of this powerful smear, many people are getting censored. Kitty Halper is just a bigger example. But remember, Mark Lamon Hill was also fired from CNN for daring to criticize Israel. There are a number of people who are being asked to sign loyalty pledges to Israel if they want government contracts, or there are other individuals like Abby Martin who are being punished if they refuse to sign loyalty pledges to Israel, these anti-BDS pledges. And this is just another example of the media trying to use that smear tactic to silence dissenting voices. Now, Ryan Grimm had some additional context because he also is a co-host at the Hill, and he explains how bizarre this really was. In an article for The Intercept he wrote, each show includes two radars, one from a left perspective and one from a right perspective, and as a former co-host of the show, I've recorded more than 150 of them. There is no approval process. A co-host files a script, which is loaded into a teleprompter. The monologue is then recorded with a back-and-forth discussion and debate with the other co-host following it. The segment is then uploaded to a variety of platforms along with the rest of the show. But Halper, who spoke publicly about the censorship Thursday evening on her live said that Monday's process was different. After the taping of the segment, producers asked co-host Robbie Sove to do what's known as a pickup, a fairly standard editorial addition to a segment. In this case, Sove was asked to repeat something that had already been included, namely the perspective of the Anti-Defamation League CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, that stood in opposition to Tlaib. Later, Halper was told the segment was being reviewed and held up. Later in the week, she was told it wouldn't run, when she asked if she could discuss the subject in her next appearance on HillTV, she was told her invitation had been rescinded, according to an email from an executive with the Next Star Media Group, which owns HillTV along with scores of local news channels, and the cable news channel News Nation, which recently hired former CNN presenter Chris Cuomo. The decision of whether to post the segment was kicked from rising producers to the Hill's editor-in-chief Bob Cusack in a call with Halper on Wednesday. He framed Halper's segment as similar to an op-ed submission, telling her that the Hill accepts some submissions and rejects other submissions, and that this right extends to HillTV journalism as well, except she was later fired. Do you all fire people if you also reject their op-ed submission too, or is this just something that you did to Katie Halper because you don't like what she had to say specifically? Listen, the Hill is trash. This is not a network that the left should be supporting. This is corporate media, and I say this is someone who was actually a guest on the Hill Rising back when Crystal Ball was still co-hosting this with Saw Granjetti. She invited me on the program. I was on the show, and it was lovely. They often give their hosts a lot of editorial discretion. But when they cross certain limits, we're learning what they're willing to do, not just censor them, but fire them as well. Now, I'm going to link you to Katie Halper's full segment down below because I think that what she says here is really important, and most importantly, it's factual. What she's saying is factual. But we're in this state where the tide is starting to turn with regard to Israeli apartheid, and more and more people are speaking up for the first time ever. Members of Congress are condemning Israel for the apartheid government that it is. And because of that, well, people who defend Israel, no matter what, and condone apartheid, they're terrified. So they're working overtime to try to censor voices who speak out on behalf of Palestine. And because of this, I only expect the censorship to get worse. But either way, this is not okay. And, you know, if you care about free speech, you should stand in solidarity with Katie Halper here, because this is not acceptable. Everything that she said was not a conjecture. It was not based on her opinion. It was based on facts. So even if she was editorializing, she was presenting people with objective information and details about the human rights abuses from the Israeli government. If you can criticize a government without being anti-Semitic, then you can't criticize any government. You can't criticize Saudi Arabia for their human rights abuses without being Islamophobic. You can't criticize African governments for human rights abuses without being racist. You can't criticize the American government without being an American hater. This is not a standard that I want to set.